


Creatures of habit

by aryastark_valarmorghulis



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Compliant, Falling In Love, First War with Voldemort, Friends to Lovers, M/M, POV Sirius Black, Porn with Feelings, Smut, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-23 19:24:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20013544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aryastark_valarmorghulis/pseuds/aryastark_valarmorghulis
Summary: Sirius might be falling in love with Remus.(But he loved James first)"They sit on the lumpy sofa to nurse a beer, listen to the wireless, chat idly about inconsequential topics, cook mediocre food that gets eaten anyway, comfortably mocking each other over silly idiosyncrasies. After a while, they move to the bed."





	Creatures of habit

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to my wonderful Beta [shaggydogstail](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shaggydogstail/pseuds/shaggydogstail)!  
> Warnings: consensual sex between two adults.

Sirius can’t recall the day, the moment, the words spoken and the ones left unsaid, but spending every night with Remus escalated quickly from a drunken one-off to a well-worn habit.

He can retrace the events that lead them both here, though, in Sirius’ narrow bed, all over each other. It all started with James – as everything does – and his ill-advised idea to ditch the three of them to play house with Evans in a Merlin-forsaken cottage in the countryside. They even have yellow curtains and teacups with matching saucers, garden gnomes and a porch, a disarmingly domestic arrangement that cut loose the tight rope holding the Marauders together. After that, the world went madly spinning and darkening, all dominoes quickly falling: the engagement, the full-time job for the Order, Peter moving back with his mum, and Remus – well.

He’s just like Sirius. Lonely. So they stick together like two unmatching pieces of a puzzle, and instead of going out in one of the countless London bars where before all this started he usually picked up men or women, Sirius spends all his evenings with Remus. They sit on the lumpy sofa to nurse a beer, listen to the wireless, chat idly about inconsequential topics, cook mediocre food that gets eaten anyway, comfortably mocking each other over silly idiosyncrasies. After a while, they move to the bed.

There’s a still residual weirdness in having sex with Remus, a thin glaze like the one that remains inside of a cleaned ashtray, a foreign aftertaste that colours their kisses. Sirius quickly forgets about it when his traitorous mind reminds him in his fantasies it wasn’t strange, not at all, to have sex with James.

Even the phrase _having sex_ sounds strange to his ears – it reflects only the mechanics of what they do, but it doesn’t explain the complicated slot of their bodies, the way sometimes Remus takes forever to come, the tenderness that Sirius didn’t even know he was capable of when they do it after the moon.

But lovemaking is a soppy, saccharine word that might apply to James and Lily, Dorcas and Marlene, Alice and Frank: maybe language is limited, it lacks the scope to describe what he does with Remus.

Remus himself would suggest _fuck_ or _shag_ , with that aloof tone he affects sometimes when he wants to fool people into thinking he’s this detached, objective lad.

Mulling too much over it could open a gaping ravine full of unanswerable questions, so Sirius chooses not to think at all, and it’s surprisingly easy to lose himself into it, being held by Remus, his dazed look when he’s about to come, the affectionate cuddling after. 

Remus holds Sirius’ thighs spread open to suck his prick with ease, if not expertise, lips hot and wet, freckled cheeks red as ripe strawberries, and he can’t deny that the sight of Remus’ dark head – calm, collected, mild, nail-bitten Moony – kneeling between his legs, naked and needy and begging for it is the biggest turn on.

Sirius tugs at his messy hair and fucks his mouth, overcome with the electrifying heat that pools in his groin, clenches his fists on the itchy sheets not to spill right now, not yet.

Remus isn’t shy like Sirius expected – even if he never said a word about getting off with someone, and therefore Sirius pictured him a virgin or such, but Remus has mastered secrecy ever since he was a kid, after all. He fucks like he’s got something to prove and most of all he’s eager, he never says no, he’s up to try every weird thing Sirius suggests. It’s quite the revelation, that Remus, so sweet, poised Moony, lets Sirius of all people watch him when he’s naked and vulnerable, that he allows Sirius to come into his mouth and in his arse, and cries out filthy words that cut through the quiet of his bedroom.

Sirius cherishes all the times Remus takes him inside, the rhythm of their bodies frenzied and messy and rough and erratic, like they’re holding each other in a desperate attempt to get in synch.

It’s one of the things Sirius is slowly growing accustomed to, a piece of himself that Remus, by far the most closed-off of his friends, choose to give him. He feels like he should know everything about him – he’s known a part of him more intimately than Prongs, after all, and yet he doesn’t.

So much is left unsaid, buried under a sandstorm of unnamed feelings.

They don’t talk about the war, mostly because Sirius doesn’t want to tarnish their little spot of escapism, but also because lately Remus has been sullen and mysterious, and Sirius doesn’t want to demand answers, he wants to be told freely.

They never mention James beyond passing remarks, _what will you wear at the engagement dinner,_ and _it’s not even at a restaurant, Pads, and anyway I only have three robes_. Sometimes Sirius has suspects that Remus doesn’t want to talk about James to spare Sirius’ feelings, or maybe his own.

The issue is that Remus isn’t James and isn’t a faceless stranger either, but a precious in-between surprise and Sirius can’t shrug him off – nor does he want to – but he also can’t help but believe that all this stems from James: the Marauders’ friendship, the affair with Remus, even their affiliation with the Order. Everything, in the end, comes back to James. 

He realises it’s not fair to compare his best friend, his first love, to Remus: James is the light side of the moon, someone he never had – and by now he has pretty much accepted he never will – and the ache of unfulfilled cravings will always be unreachable, a zenith of idealised perfection, the desire never consummated always burning higher than a sated yearning. He’s never had a chance with James and yet his feelings persisted for years and years, preserved - cherished, even - in his heart like a prize: _I loved you first, Prongs, there was me before anyone else._

So he and Remus talk about everything and nothing, with the cosiness and comfort that comes with eight years of solid friendship. How startling it is, to be able to chuck his dirty socks at Remus like he always did and then pull off his pants a second after, a seamless switch from friends to lovers to friends, an endless circle that has no clear end or beginning. 

Sirius still doesn’t know what shapes Remus’ frail desires late at night, before falling asleep, what future he dreams beyond the war, or how to decipher his quiet, tired glances, what meaning Sirius’ brokenly whispered name on his tongue holds.

Maybe he might know if he cared to find out, but it’s easier to avert his eyes and pretend not to notice other people’s feelings, to hurt and get hurt in return only because what he longs for is unreachable.

Tonight Remus finishes him off with his hand, Sirius’ leaking prick so close to his face that the spunk ends up all over his cheeks and mouth.

Not wasting time, Sirius sinks his head on Remus’ lap and bite at the tender flesh of his inner thigh, hard enough that Remus yelps softly in surprise, but soon relaxes and lets Sirius bruise the sweat-salty skin, lets him map with soft-firm hands the topography of white raised scars on his waist.

Sirius moans around Remus’ prick when he feels the scratch of blunt nails on his shoulders, and he’s sure he never liked cock-sucking as much as he does now; he wants so badly to make Remus come, to make him feel good, to give what he can give with his body.

He doesn’t manage to swallow it all and laughs a little when it dribbles on his chin, but then Remus cradles his face with rough, shaky hands and kisses his mouth, his cheeks, his whole face, a shattering kind of magic trembling under his palms.

Remus’ breathing turns regular again, he lays on Sirius’ chest, messy hair tickling his chin.

After a moment, Sirius gains back enough clarity to understand this is one of those moments, the one he secretly fears, the one that makes him feel lacking and inadequate and guilty – the moments where he’s supposed to say something but the words burn at the back of his throat like an uncast spell. He can almost taste the sound of words he needs – no, he _wants_ – to say.

 _You’re really fit, do you know it?_ Not entirely true, because Remus is far from the most attractive person he’s taken to bed, he’s wispy and weedy and going grey at nineteen, his shoulders slightly hunched, his teeth a bit crooked and his nose is a tad too long. And yet, Sirius loves his body. Because it’s him, he reckons. Because it’s me.

 _I really like you. Might even love you, in my own broken way._ This one rests on the tip of his tongue, a secret he always tries to press in the crook of Remus’ neck, at the top of his spine, between his arse cheeks, on his sweet lips.

Remus raises his head a little, face still pink and shiny with perspiration, brown eyes huge and melancholic.

Sirius is almost ready to go again, especially if Remus is about to say something, something important, just to shut him up-

“What are you thinking about?”

Sirius shrugs, strokes the white scar on Remus’ temple, hidden by his hair.

“You,” he replies, a half-lie or a half-truth.

Remus smiles softly, but his dark soulful eyes look troubled, and there’s sadness in the quirk of his mouth. “Me?” he draws an imaginary line through Sirius’ chest as if to say, _if I slice you wide open it’s not me I’ll find etched in your heart_.

“Yes, you,” Sirius repeats, and he hopes they can both believe it.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/aryastark-valarmorghulis)!  
> 


End file.
